


Skydiving

by EarthsickWithoutYou



Category: The OA (TV)
Genre: Afterlife, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dimension Travel, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, Romance, Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-12
Updated: 2018-03-16
Packaged: 2019-03-17 03:01:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13650054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EarthsickWithoutYou/pseuds/EarthsickWithoutYou
Summary: Set in an AU where Hap's intentions are simply as they appear to be during his original meet cute with Prairie.  Jumps off from there with the development of their relationship and some adventures that challenge it.





	1. Not just any kind of blue

Prairie’s hand drifted merrily along the bannister as she descended the stairs. She could feel the warm sunshine beaming through the open windows, inviting her to keep going towards the tempting smells emanating from the kitchen. Her stomach grumbled and she never expected her heel to go sliding out from under her as she suddenly stumbled over the last two steps, landing straight in Hap’s arms. “Oops,” Prairie giggled, tingly and dizzy at the feeling of his strong, warm hands covering so much of her skin. She wondered how long she could get away with standing this way. “I’m not usually that clumsy.”

Hap let go of her, politely shifting his hands to a gentle touch at each of her shoulders, the tentative sensation almost as good as the more overt near-caress from a moment before. “You’ve got more poise than anyone I’ve met, Prairie, but we’re all human,” he reassured her, pulling out a chair at the table. 

“I’m making omelettes,” he informed her cheerfully, and Prairie let herself become wrapped up in the sounds of his fluid, confident movements, the swishing of the eggs in the pan and the scrape of the spatula. The fresh, savory aroma of bell peppers and tomatoes tickled her nose, along with…

“Is that goat’s cheese?” She asked excitedly. “That’s my favorite.”

There was a pause, then. He did this sometimes, and even just twenty-four hours or so of knowing Hap had established this habit in her understanding of who he was. She was pleasantly, blushingly conscious of his gaze lingering on her, and he was pensive, curiosity and attraction pulsing in the air between them. “Me, too,” he finally replied. 

For all his charm and charisma, he held himself back from others always, she sensed. It seemed to her that the sudden glow of their new friendship had taken him by surprise, and she liked the balance between the easy confidence he exhibited when talking about his work and the near bashfulness he could lapse back into during more personal discussions. It was as though she liked living in those little breaks when he would pull himself up short and just look at her, not quite knowing what they were or how he should proceed. Although they were unknowable to her as of yet, Prairie liked Hap’s secrets.

They’d talked all night, until she fell asleep. Even though he’d said goodnight soon after showing her carefully where everything was located in the guest room and adjoining bathroom, and how to get back out to the stairs that led to the kitchen and living room, she’d followed up the tour with some question about how the research study would commence. After that, they’d fallen into stimulating chatter on the subject, then about her fellow test subjects, and a little about her life back home before Prairie had surrendered to slumber. Waking up alone, she discovered that the sound of Hap rustling around downstairs was immediately soothing and enticing.

Prairie adjusted the strap of her tank top to cover her bra and smoothed her hands over her soft, crepe-textured skirt. She could remember pink, and based on how Nancy had described the shade the day they’d found it at the mall, Prairie guessed that the coral was probably a bit darker than the flush in her cheeks right then. After a hot shower, her hair was still a bit damp, scooped up into a clip at the back of her head, a few stray tendrils brushing her face. 

Hap placed a plate of food in front of her and sat down, only to jump back up again. “I forgot the coffee and juice,” he noted, but she stood up as well.

“Really, Hap, you don’t have to wait on me. I’m a paying tenant here, remember? I can help. Just point me in the right direction.” 

“To your left,” Hap indicated. “And I wish you’d reconsider using your payment for the study to pay rent on the room. I truly don’t mind your staying here during our tests. I’m sure that within the weeks of our study, you’ll have time to look into your options and figure out where you want to go from here. Maybe back home, maybe to college?”

Why would he do that, take her in for who knew how long? 

Prairie tipped the coffee pot into each mug, shaking her head with a smile. “I had no idea what to do with myself when I started playing my violin, right before you found me. The disappointment of not finding my father at the Statue of Liberty, it was piercing through me. I realized that I’d rested all my hopes for the future on that destiny, and it wasn’t coming true, so where did that leave me? Now, it’s like you’ve given me a purpose, a way forward and a chance to breathe away from Nancy and Abel and the _pills,_ ugh.” She stuck her tongue out comically at the mention of the medication which Hap had assured her was unnecessary, just as she’d always thought herself. He laughed, taking the coffees as she grabbed the juice glasses from the counter and returned to her chair.

“I had no idea how I was going to find the last subject I needed for the testing,” Hap said, blowing into his mug. “In order to properly compare results, I needed at least five individuals who had all experienced NDE’s. It’s kind of surreal to hear you talking as if I’m doing you such a favor, Prairie, when really, the privilege is all mine. Plus…I can already tell that it’s going to be nice having you here.”

Prairie’s heart sped up slightly. Their acquaintance was brief at this point, but it seemed to have been arranged so intently by destiny that perhaps it wasn’t odd for her to feel such joy in his presence. Also…she knew there was something more, feelings that were fairly far away from the mentor/protege rapport one might expect to blossom between them given her enthusiastic interest in the details of his work. Last night, Hap had guessed that maybe Prairie would be well-suited to a career in science and-or medicine as well, and in understanding the far-flung realms of theoretical fascination that held him so personally in thrall. This overwhelming need to know as much as he could about what lay beyond death made him recognize the same craving in Prairie because it was kindred. 

All her life, she’d wanted to put the pieces of her scattered memories together until they made sense so that she could have a future to match who she was truly meant to be. Maybe she was finally getting closer to that truth -- maybe she and Hap could show each other the way.

She pressed her fork into the fluffy, cheesy eggs, scooping a delicious bite into her mouth. “Mmm. You can cook,” she observed appreciatively. “I like to cook, too. My parents taught me. I spent some time recently trying to recreate recipes that I can remember from my childhood in Russia, but I could tell that in doing that, somehow I was hurting their feelings, so I stopped. Things like that, even though it isn’t their fault…they’re the reasons why I had to leave home to find my place in the world. To be able to explore and just be me, _know_ me.”

“I think we all hit that crossroads around your age,” Hap replied, grating pepper over his plate. “Did you manage to get your parents on the phone this morning?”

“I did,” she nodded. “They were pretty angry with me for the way I left, and not all that thrilled that I was planning to explore the meaning of my visions after my NDE. They’ve always been afraid that because of my other strange qualities, the crazy dreams and the nosebleeds, all that…that it was all sort of intertwined and could lead me down some rabbit hole to trouble they couldn’t save me from. I guess most parents, adoptive or otherwise, of disabled children are naturally overprotective, but sometimes I think mine take the cake.”

“It’s as if you can’t help but sympathize, even empathize with them even as they’re holding you down,” Hap surmised. “Believe me, you don’t need any unusual ingredients to get a feeling like that from your parents. Mine were smothering and cold in equal, disturbingly unpredictable measures.” 

Her curiosity was piqued by this reference to his origins, but he went on breezily, as if to brush away the lapse into overly personal confession, “And Prairie, there’s nothing strange or crazy about your dreams or symptoms. Special. Remarkable. That’s what they are.” In the silence, she felt as if he wanted to add “That’s what _you_ are,” and she longed to say that he was, too. Why was she feeling all of this so soon? Still, it was hard to want to slow down.

“So how long of a drive is it into town?” Prairie inquired, since she knew the other participants in Hap’s study would be commuting from the small community that lay beyond the forest which surrounded this large, somewhat isolated house. It was built on top of an old mine, and in the basement Hap had set up his lab with all the equipment he would need to monitor their responses to different activities and even some hypnotic sessions. 

Hap swallowed a bite of omelette and said, “It’s only about fifteen minutes by car, though I walk it plenty. It’s a gorgeous stretch of woods. Plus, I may like the quiet repose of this place to concentrate on work, but God knows I need to be within reasonable distance of a good restaurant with a bar in it. There’s several around here, plus an excellent library, and a lively academic life. You may want to step into the University sometime over the next few weeks, chat with an advisor. Only if you want to, of course. Sorry, I’m starting to sound kind of bossy and presumptuous. You’re here to find your own way.”

“I appreciate your advice,” she assured him happily. “So, what time are they getting here?”

*******************************************************************************

“And this is Prairie Johnson,” Hap informed the others a couple of hours later. In turn, Prairie clasped hands with each of her fellow participants as he added, “In the short time I’ve known her, we’ve become fast friends and she’s helped me start setting up our experiments so capably that I’m even inclined to begin relying on her as a potential assistant.” 

She blushed, laughed and stammered, “Cut it out, they’re going to think I’m the teacher’s pet.” As she spoke, Prairie laid a teasing hand against Hap’s chest for just a second, pretending to shove him back, but as she performed the motion, she felt how hard and fast his heart was beating and it shocked her. He was very excited, and it seemed to be caused by much more than the fact that they were beginning this unprecedented study. But maybe she was reading too much into it, basing her guesses about his feelings on her own and what she hoped he reciprocated. _Seriously, Prairie, jeez, you just met the guy,_ she chided herself.

“Too late,” Homer remarked with zero resentment, “You’ve clearly taken advantage of getting here before us. I can’t hate, though. When you have obvious smarts, there’s no point wasting them. Me, I’m hoping to make up for the past few months of getting nothing done while I recovered from my injury and then sulked around feeling sorry for myself. I need money for my new baby, and I gotta get back in fighting shape. There’s still scholarships out there for me if I can get my act together.”

“New baby?” Prairie and Rachel repeated, then they both laughed. “Congratulations!”

“Thanks,” Homer replied, “It’s about time I start making moves to prove to my girlfriend I’m more than a former star athlete turned deadbeat.”

“I’m here for the music program at the University,” Rachel explained, “And I can definitely use the cash I’m getting for this study to help out with that. Although I always _did_ want to know more about where the hell I went that day when I died, and how I came back, you know?” They all nodded with a unique understanding. “I think it will help me sort of reconnect to the memory of my brother,” she continued. “He died that day and I…sort of blamed myself. I need to get over that to be healthy, and this feels like a good step in that direction.”

“My husband talked me into coming here,” Renata contributed in her beguilingly lilting Cuban accent. Prairie could easily imagine their voices becoming part of the everyday pattern of her life: Homer’s affable charm, Scott’s impatient distraction, Rachel’s lust for life, and Renata’s inimitable cool. The sounds of friendship. “He thinks I need to understand what happened to me. I think I let him convince me too easily, but we’ll see.”

“All I know is I’m here to get paid and check out the nightlife,” Scott announced drily. “Are we getting started soon?”

*******************************************************************  
The first day began with a group session to simply recap their NDE’s so that everyone had a basic familiarity with what the others had gone through: cause and circumstances of death, what they could remember of their experience in the beyond, and what they felt and recalled about awakening. Next, Hap wanted to place them each under hypnosis individually with the hope that after learning a bit more, he could then place them in a trance together, converging their memories to form a deeper journey into the mysteries they intended to explore.

These sessions stretched across several days, with Hap intricately monitoring their reactions to make sure no one was overly excited or panicked. Prairie admired his dedicated attention to detail, his neat, unflappable brilliance and the care he put into making sure everyone was at ease and safe. 

One night during this period, Prairie was sitting in the living room with a hot cup of cocoa when she heard the screen door easing shut and Hap coughing softly as he reentered the house. 

“Hey,” he greeted her, taking in the sight of her curled up with a book in her hand, comfortable enough around him that she wore her striped pajamas and fuzzy sleep socks, making the scene cozy and domestic. He tapped the cover of her hard-bound book, murmuring, “Anything good?”

“Yes, a volume of classic science fiction stories,” Prairie replied thoughtfully. “It’s funny, the other name for sci-fi is ‘speculative fiction.’ Sounds not unlike what we’re up to here, speculating, pushing into the unknown for answers that once seemed unfathomable. Anyway, it seemed apropos. Thanks for asking Rachel to bring me some braille books from the library.” 

_Don’t blush again,_ she cautioned herself as he hovered over her a beat longer than necessary, his breath warm and steady beside her. He smelled of coffee, like always. She didn’t know how he ever slept with the amount he drank; it was compulsive, an accompaniment to the rhythm of how he worked which seemed inextricable, however bad of a habit it was. Thinking of which…along with the exceptionally nice blend of sandalwood and mint wafting from his clothing and skin, there was another smell which troubled her.

“Hap, you shouldn’t smoke,” she told him bluntly, unable to help voicing the concern.

“I know,” he said ruefully, backing up. “I’m sorry, I hope I don’t reek of tobacco or anything. It’s a nervous sort of an addiction, that. The closer I get to discovery, to revelation in my work, the adrenaline overtakes me until before I know it, I’m guzzling caffeine and using nicotine to balance it out. Truth be told, I never had someone here to notice my wicked ways. It’s kind of a lovely change to have that now, with you. If you, uh, don’t mind my saying.” 

He finished the babbling speech but seemed to feel he needed to keep talking in order to stave off the awkwardness that threatened to take him over. His heart was showing again, and the vulnerability of it was so unfamiliar that it scared him. 

“Hey,” Hap said again, lightly, “You know, you’re not living with your parents anymore, Prairie. You can have a glass of wine if you prefer. Would you like me to get you one?”

He waited, and at first, she couldn’t believe he had finally shut up. The adorableness of his disjointed, almost imploring explanation had floored her. His voice was sweet and engrossing, all smarts and quirks, rolling over Prairie until she knew she’d never really liked another sound better. 

Prairie closed her book and sat up straighter, shooting him what she hoped was a cute, bright expression, complete with a smile that welcomed him to continue opening up to her rather than slinking back into hiding. “Hap, you don’t reek of tobacco. In fact, you smell really good.” She let the daring words sink in for just a beat before she followed up with, “It’s just that by smoking, you’re, well. You’re hurting yourself. And I don’t like that, because of how much I like you. Make sense?”

“Yeah,” he said, amazed, “Thank you, Prairie. I…I’ll try to stop. I promise.”

“I’ll take that glass of wine, please,” she replied with a grin, pleased that he’d immediately surrendered to her desire for him to quit. _Good boy._ Wow, where were these thoughts coming from? She’d always been reserved, goofy even, and now she sounded to her own mind like some extroverted vixen. Prairie could sense that she held power over Hap just as he exuded it pleasurably over her, and it felt positively, undeniably _euphoric_. 

_This must be what it feels like,_ she realized, startled although she’d known it was coming since he found her in the train station. _Falling in love._

He gave her another one of those pauses, the ones that felt like intimately precious gifts, making her yearn to _see_ the way he looked at her. When he returned, carefully pressing a cool glass of Chardonnay into her hand, Prairie took a sip and then set it on the table beside her.

“Hap,” she beckoned quietly, arresting his apt attention all too easily again. “If you don’t mind, can you come over here? Can I…can I know your face?” She reached her hands out, and he came to her just like that, sinking to his knees as Prairie’s fingers began to traverse his sturdily handsome features. It would have been far too forward to trace his lips as provocatively as she wanted to, so she had to be satisfied for now with the briefest touch there. That was enough to make him start slightly, causing a reciprocal rush to spread throughout her body. “Hap, you okay? Did I have a little static electricity or something there? Did I jolt you?”

“I’m fine,” he said quietly. “You’re fine, it, uh. It’s more than fine, Prairie.” He withdrew, again falling back into cordial, respectful restraint. He’d invited her to his home for a study, making her both his test subject and lodger. A week ago, they’d been strangers. And he was older…he had to be twenty or twenty-five years her senior at least, Prairie guessed. Her regret on that topic had nothing to do with his age; she liked him exactly the way he was. It was that the combination of items in his mind that would naturally make any gentleman maintain a certain distance…this was becoming its own special sort of delectable torment. 

The waiting game between them was addictively sensuous, but as she felt the loss of his touch like a hurtful deprivation, Prairie knew she would only be able to wait a little while longer before letting Hap knew how she felt about him.


	2. You can't just slash your way through it

Four years later

He’d waited too long, and now it was too damn late, Hap thought miserably. Because that’s what happened when you waited. 1,460 days of living with Prairie Johnson, and just as many missed opportunities to tell her how he felt. Now she was going to slip right through his fingers, gone from his everyday life like a ghost of every bit of happiness he could have had. 

Even though it had been the fear of losing what they had together that had made him cling to its platonic nature, it was becoming obvious that his gutlessness on this topic would be his undoing. Hap bit down on his finger, watching through the glass as Prairie interviewed Rachel, capably monitoring her vitals. With gentle, firm guidance, she led Rachel back through the world of memory until they could again try and glean details about the beyond. Initially, he’d expected this period of the research process to wrap up in a matter of weeks. However, the amount of tantalizingly complex detail attached to each and every description they gave of the other side had made it clear that more time was needed.

So the other subjects, save Prairie, left for the rest of the year, returning again each Fall for another ten weeks. It was agreed that they would continue the study on this time table and that Hap and Prairie could use the time between sessions to analyze their findings. The sound aspect alone took months to research, and that was before they even got around to the imagery. As for the words, this was the theme he was intending to dig into during the next break. Each subject had their own piece of the larger puzzle. There were other methods he’d brought into the endeavor to supplement the hypnosis.

“You’re going to teach each other the exact skill which your NDE refined,” Hap had announced a few weeks back. “That means Prairie, you’ll be teaching violin; Renata, guitar; Scott, the art of persuasion; Rachel, voice; Homer, athleticism.”

“What are we forming a…sports band or something? And my role is to make sure we get super-sweet endorsements?” Scott chuckled with typical cynicism.

“There’s a connection being entrenched within and between you all,” Hap elaborated, running his finger through the air in front of the five. “By sharing your gifts, you’ll strengthen and deepen that understanding. I believe that we can delve further into comprehending the bond you've created, if you’ll undertake this aspect.”

It had gone sort of comically for a while; watching Scott try and drag a bow across a violin was almost as funny as the number of guitar strings Homer snapped or how Prairie chose to apply her more sophisticated vocal stylings to the works of Britney Spears. She did it to entertain them all and show that there was fun to be had in the seemingly tedious new tasks they were working on. Prairie was like that; she hardly needed Scott’s tutelage on talking people into things. Hap should know; he was wrapped around Prairie’s finger so tightly now that he could just about breathe at the thought he would ever lose her.

She’d visited Nancy and Abel a couple of times a year and started taking a few classes at the university; he forgot how to cope with every additional absence that common sense dictated he must learn to accept. Prairie was brilliant, unforgettable, a shining light. She was going places. He was going to be left behind. Tick-tock, tick-tock. It was just a matter of fucking time.

“So have you thought anymore about what I asked you yesterday?” Rachel asked as Prairie disconnected the monitoring equipment. Hap knew he shouldn’t keep listening, but he couldn’t stop himself. It was just like his other obsessive habits, the ones that made him feel embarrassed, pathetic. He couldn’t take a shower without uncapping her shampoo, conditioner and body wash, smelling them and fantasizing. In Prairie, Hap lost himself too easily. Someday, he might not be able to find the thread anymore, and what would happen? He’d go crazy for not having her, or he’d recede further from society because everything would only remind him of _her?_

“Yeah, I don’t know,” Prairie replied pensively. 

“Well, really, why are you still living here, with Hap? You’re a little cut off from college life, aren’t you? When was the last time you hit up a party or joined a club? Went on a date, for that matter? You could come room with me at the dorm, it would be a blast!”

Hap sank his teeth deeper into his flesh when he heard Rachel mention dating. He wanted to disconnect the sound from his headphones immediately, but he seemed to have frozen in horrified shock.

“We’ve just got so much work to do, it’s all-consuming sometimes,” Prairie shrugged. “And I’m happy here, you know? I like the work-life-school balance I’ve got just fine.”

“But this isn’t your work, it’s his,” Rachel argued, concerned, Hap guessed, that Prairie was wasting time that would be better spent on other pursuits.

“It’s _ours,_ ” Prairie said with shy pridefulness, a dreamy look in her eyes that made his heart soar momentarily. “We’re partners, he told me that.”

“Are you sure there’s not something more going on between you two?” Rachel wondered suspiciously. She didn’t look like she thought it was a good idea if there was.

Whether because she sensed Rachel’s disapproval, wasn't ready to share, or actually did only regard Hap as a friend, Prairie laughed quietly and answered, “Oh, no, there’s never been. That’s not a part of this.”

“In that case, if you can tear yourself away from the afterlife long enough to embark on an _actual_ life, I’m going to wait a little longer before I put out an ad for that new vacancy in my room,” Rachel proposed. “Cool?”

Hap’s hopes fell again as Prairie was clearly mulling over Rachel’s words about not having a life, and about the chance to expand her horizons. This was it, the beginning of the end. "Cool," Prairie confirmed, and Hap was yet again anything but.

“Hey, you,” she greeted him fondly a little while later, passing him a mug.

“Is this decaf again?” He asked dubiously, slipping his headphones off and turning to face her. 

Prairie laughed. “Half-caff. A fair compromise?”

He took a sip and shrugged. “A little bit is better than none at all,” he reasoned. God, he might as well have been talking about his emotions regarding her.

“Walk with me, Hap?” she asked, a deeper meaning underlaying the request. 

_Here we go,_ he thought in dread. _She’s going to go live with Rachel, pull back on being so involved with the work. She’s leaving me._ For Prairie’s own good, though, Hap knew he had to take it the right away, smile and warmly encourage her independence. He steeled himself against the pain and prepared accordingly.

“Sure, I always like to walk with you,” he agreed casually. Their fingers were so close as they walked along, habitually brushing so that he kept her on the path, his quick touch at her wrist alerting her to the occasional rock or tree branch they might encounter before she could trip on it. 

The air was full of the smell of mountain air and pine needles, the town below them like a separate world, pleasant enough but outside the life they’d built together here. That said, he loved it when they’d walk into town for dinner, even though he could never get up the nerve to ask her to dance. Soon she’d have other people to do those things with, their things. Dorm mates, and of course, boyfriends…

“Hap, there’s something I’ve been wanting to talk to you about for a really long time,” Prairie began falteringly, “Like, almost since we first met. And every time I open my mouth to confess it to you, it’s like I’ve got all these marbles stuck in there, you know?” She puffed her cheeks out and gestured with her hands to indicate the fullness there, and she was so cute that Hap couldn’t help laughing even as his heart cracked. He knew where this was going. She’d always wanted to tell him that she needed more in life, that this arrangement of cohabitation simply couldn’t last forever.

Prairie was the only forever he’d ever wanted. Before her, there had been nothing but forgettable ephemera, which was part of the reason why he’d always prioritized research over socializing.

“First, you should know that I’ve kept quiet about it because our partnership, the work we’ve done, what we’re continuing to discover, it’s become so _integral_. It’s, um, it embodies you,” she rested a hand on his chest before placing it back on her own. “And me. And that became us. Our story. There’s nothing I’d ever want to do to jeopardize any of that.”

“Oh, I know that, Prairie, and I appreciate it,” Hap replied, “But I also know that there’s more to life than work, however immense the concepts are, whatever we can do to change the way we all see the world, you still have to have a _life._ One of your choosing.”

“Yeah,” she said shakily, “I don’t think you understand.” Her hair hung in loose, tousled waves around her shoulders, brushing the neckline of her scoop-necked, maroon dress. She sucked her lush bottom lip under her teeth, deep in thought, and Hap realized that he’d been an idiot to think he couldn’t fall any further for her.

Prairie took his hand and stepped closer, murmuring, “Hap, what I’m trying to tell you is that I—”

“Whoops,” Scott said as he and Homer came jogging up to meet them. “We totally just interrupted A Moment.”

Hap didn’t mind, because he really thought he was going to hate the moment. He was almost grateful for the intrusion. “What’s up, guys?” he asked nonchalantly, though beside him he felt Prairie bristling in annoyed disappointment. She must have really wanted to get this over with.

“Sorry,” Homer added, “But there’s some guy up at the house to see you. Says he’s an old colleague of yours? Dr. Citro?”

“Oh, Leon,” Hap muttered, far from thrilled at the announcement. His next thought was how he was going to get rid of his old friend. A visit from Leon was more of an imposition than anything else, once one understood the true motives. He sighed and continued, “We’ll be right there.”

*************************************************************

“Well, would you look at this guy,” Leon greeted him in his typically booming, fake-tastic way, throwing his arms around Hap. “Hunter Aloysius Percy, founder of his very own little mind-bending commune.” His eyes tracked the five as they went about their business, grabbing snacks and returning to their lessons. Homer was actually getting halfway decent on the guitar, Hap realized as a relieved sidenote. He’d never thought the day would come, not before they were all ear-impaired by his practice sessions. 

“Homer, you’re getting _good,_ ” Prairie called, and he nodded back at her. Hap had always wondered if there was an attraction there. He knew little of Homer’s personal life and if he was still with his girlfriend. Prairie and Homer were the right age and disposition to be interested in one another, so from a scientist’s standpoint, he couldn’t deny it made sense, no matter how much it bothered him.

“So, I’m giving a presentation on forensics at the University, and while I’m here, I’d be thrilled to catch up with my old pal, maybe even see a little of this universe-altering work you’ve been so caught up by in recent years. Whadaya say?” Leon grinned, the expression reminding Hap, as it always did, of the Grinch. It was as though Leon’s lips could only curve crookedly, the expression ugly despite his inoffensive, ordinary face.

“Sounds great,” Hap answered politely. “Listen, today’s no good, but why don’t we have lunch tomorrow and chat about it, okay?”

As soon as Leon departed, Hap gathered the five and said implicitly, “Do not tell that man _any_ of the more salient details and features of our discoveries. Just do what I’ve always done and be nice to him until he goes away. I’ve found it an effective method since we met in medical school. That man is a snake with a soul full of skeletons and spider-webs. Be wary. Eventually, he’ll get bored and disappear again.”

“Damn, Hap, that was some speech. Turn down for what!” Scott laughed. “He seemed like a pretty friendly, well-intentioned dude to me. Like, he just missed you and wanted to talk shop. He probably admires your work.”

“A tendency which can quickly be twisted into jealousy,” Renata surmised, examining her nails.

“He gave me the creeps,” Rachel admitted, “But I don’t know why.”

“Yes, that’s sort of his whole thing,” Hap added. 

“So, then why don’t you just tell him to get lost?” Homer inquired, baffled. Next to him, Prairie was lost in thought.

“Because I’ve only ever gotten the distinct impression that making an enemy of Leon could be a life-ruining sort of error,” Hap clarified, watching as a shiver went through Prairie’s body and she clutched her own arms.

Her premonitions could come in sleeping or wakefulness, as he’d learned over time. They’d gotten used to her jumbled worries, the can’t-put-a-finger-on-it apprehensions that left her in a daze of indecision. Hap had always hoped that by fully understanding the nature of her journey beyond after her NDE, they might more closely hone her apparent psychic proclivities. Maybe then, they could be a tool instead of a burden. It had never seemed bizarre to him, the dreams, visions, and nosebleeds, the uncanny ability Prairie had to tune into _other_ frequencies. You simply didn’t embark on a career like his unless you deeply believed in powerful, rewarding explanations for the seemingly strange.

“I wish we could just get him to go away now,” Prairie fretted all of a sudden. She turned on her heel and walked quickly away, needing to be alone, wanting space to process.

******************************************************************************

During her session later that day, Prairie’s eyes stayed open, seeing back into the past, into the unending. The distinct, hollow wind they’d isolated from her description of the soundscape seemed to be that of an ice-storm, but not from anywhere or anytime in the world he’d been able to pin down. She lingered in a sort of dream-cave, talking to a goddess of death who would take young Nina’s sight away before returning the child to the living realm. This part always bothered him, cut into him, drove him wild with the desire to protect Prairie: that the goddess had warned of terrible events to come in Nina’s life. Calamities so awful that it would be _better_ to be blind. 

Today, they focused in on the words, and she repeated them again verbatim as clearly as ever. None of the other subjects could call to mind their experiences in this amount of specificity. Hap had to think this ability, or this special affinity as he might term it, was linked to Prairie’s other special skill, the precognitive perception which she had experienced since birth. Her sixth sense.

He drew the hypnotic trance from Prairie as he might gently pull a veil from her face, and her eyes changed, brightened, almost seemed to take him in for half a second. Then she smiled and said, just like always, “So, what did we learn?”

“We’ve got a script now, Prairie, from each of you, and from that we can begin cross-referencing. I think you’re right to want to run the vocabulary against your books on mythology and the collective unconscious. I’m going to translate the scripts into other languages, see what meaning can be derived to enhance what we can get out of it.” Just as he’d done plenty of times, he slipped his fingers beneath the suction pads on her stomach in order to remove them. But as his touch grazed her toned abdomen, firmed by her fitness sessions with Homer, he sucked in a breath and drew back apologetically. She’d moved away from him, cutting off the brief contact he'd spent all day looking forward to.

“I’m sorry, I know my hands are probably cold,” Hap said quickly, trying to stay in one piece. But she reached out and took his fingers in her own, rubbing them as if to restore warmth.

“They are,” Prairie smiled softly, “But it didn’t feel bad, I wasn’t cringing. It was sort of a jolt. Um, a pleasurable one.”

He thought his heart might have stopped. “What?” he asked, dumbfounded. She stroked his fingers, then frowned. 

“What are these?” Prairie asked worriedly, noticing the indentations from what must be his nine hundredth nervous habit: biting his fingers. It had been getting worse and worse lately under the stress of thinking she might be leaving. He couldn’t speak, didn’t know how to explain, but she found the freshest small wound and sighed. “This one is still bleeding a little. Were you doing this while I was in my trance?”

“I guess so,” he admitted, looking down at his thumb in her grasp.

Prairie lifted his finger to her mouth and placed it on her tongue, causing him to gasp, desire and its first satiation unravelling him. “Sorry,” she murmured, releasing his thumb from her warm, wet embrace. “That was just instinct.”

“Prairie,” Hap began, taking her by the hips and pulling her rolling chair towards him until their knees touched. He leaned forward and tucked a blond strand behind her ear with a massaging technique that made her give a low, anticipatory moan. Compelled to leave cowardice behind, Hap watched her eyes close right before he kissed her mouth.

She tasted of the strawberry gummy candy she liked to buy at that kitschy, old-school five and dime in town, plus the tiniest hint of tang from his own blood, which ought to have been off-putting. Instead, it didn’t matter, or only made the kiss more intense, needier. Prairie slid her tongue against his with an aching sigh, wrapping her arms around his neck as he pulled her onto his lap. Hap’s fingers sank into the hair at the back of her head, getting tangled, and his other hand ran firmly up the side of her body, pausing at the delicate, perfect rounds of her breasts, finding and circling her nipples.

“Don’t leave,” he whispered raggedly into her ear as he kissed it, then pressed his lips to her neck, feeling her breath coming fast and hard now. “Don’t go and live somewhere else, Prairie. Stay with me.” She felt better than he ever could have dreamed, all silk and jasmine, peaches and cream under his lips and fingers, so compliant to his every whim, melting against him with pleading sounds.

“Yes,” she breathed, her fingers digging into his sweater, “Don’t you see I was never going anywhere? I tried to tell you, Hap. Over and over, until I was going to explode. I want this.” Prairie bit her lip, prompting Hap to claim it as his own, sucking down on it as she rubbed against his leg. “Take me to your room,” she implored, repeating the grinding motion until his hardness strained against his jeans. 

Hap smiled then, released into the freeing ecstasy of the mutual confession. He overcame his previous nerves and let a certain deliberate, seductive purr wander into his tone. “Now, how can I say no to that?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter titles are each based on a line of dialogue from a later chapter. I'm hoping this will have a fun effect when the story comes full circle.


	3. No above, no beneath, only everything, indistinguishably woven together

On the day she'd arrived at the school for the blind, the principal had reassured little Nina that she hadn’t so much lost her sight as gained other, special advantages. 

“You’ll discover that your brain has already begun to rewire itself to enhance your other senses,” the Principal explained in a warm, encouraging voice. She was trying to bolster a small, frightened girl’s wounded confidence. But it was also true. “At times, your perception of sound, smell, taste, touch, they may even feel _too_ acute, to such an extent as to overwhelm you. Here, we can teach you to balance your sensory perceptions, find a comfort level, make the most of this wonderful new version of you.”

Over the years, Prairie believed she had honed this aspect of her blindness so that her ability to understand her surroundings and experiences was fluid, strong, apt. But now, as Hap led her into his bedroom and slammed the door behind them, kissing her so desperately that it seemed his life might depend on never parting from her, Prairie knew she’d lost that refinement. Sensory details were whipping her into an intoxicated frenzy.

_Sound_

Hap’s labored breathing matching her own, his low groans as she backed him against the door, pulling his sweater over his head and wrapping her arms around his neck. His sharp exhalation of her name as Prairie pressed his hot, wide palm against her thigh and dragged it upward until he was squeezing her ass, their groins brushing again. Her helpless moan as Hap swept her off her feet and laid her down on his bed, kissing her neck, easing the top of her dress down so that he could lick the upper curves of her breasts….

_Taste_

He’d been chewing gum again to compensate for his coffee habit, and probably the occasional secret cigarette. Hap couldn’t keep many secrets from her, but she had a tendency to be lenient with him. A zingy peppermint flavor clung to Hap’s lips, making them even tastier. She sucked his bottom lip into her mouth, imitating what he'd done to her, amazed at her own boldness. Prairie would never have expected herself to be a confident or even a competent lover. Her pathetic previous sexual experiences hadn’t taught her a damn thing about the act except how to conceal disappointment, how to make up excuses to get out of the situation as soon as possible. To get back to the man she couldn’t have, except that now she could, and… _Oh._

_Smell_

Prairie’s nose pressed to Hap’s neck and his signature scent of sandalwood, coffee and pine enveloped her. She wanted it all over her, sticking to her skin forever, implacable.

_Touch_

Hap's fingers trembled as he lifted her dress over her head, her arms instantly shooting upward to accommodate him. He undid the small plastic clasp at the front of her bra and placed the cups aside, then let out a long breath. “You’re so perfect,” he said tightly, kissing all around her pert breasts before the upward thrust of her hips informed him of her waning patience. Hap brushed his thumb over one nipple and lowered his lips to the other, licking in a slow circle to match the pattern traced by his finger. His increasingly insistent attentions to her breasts continued as he added a long suck concluding each swirl of his tongue around her hardened nipples. Prairie raised her hips again, this time circling them in time with his movements.

It wouldn’t be fair for Hap to neglect her left breast after being so very generous in his time with her right, so he repeated the whole procedure until Prairie’s core ached unbearably. She sighed out swear words and he clucked his tongue, drawing back and sweeping her hair from her face, lowering his own to her stomach. “Such language, young lady,” Hap chided teasingly, before running his tongue from just under her breasts to the shaky breath at her lower abdomen. “What am I going to do with you?”

“Show me, teach me everything about how it feels to be loved by you,” she begged. “Now.”

Of course, Hap didn’t need to hear that request twice. He slid her panties off, gasping softly because she was glistening with need for him. “Tell me if you like this,” Hap suggested huskily before kissing her pussy slowly, then flicking his tongue over the length of her entrance. 

Prairie’s whole body gave one sharp, hard twitch. “ _God,_ “ she panted. 

Sure, okay, she’d heard other girls bragging about guys going down on them, outlandish tales of life-changing orgasms and afternoon-consuming sexathons from the oversharing lips of high school vixens and sorority sweethearts. Yet her own tepid, decidedly bland experiences with oral sex had left her thinking they must be exaggerating.

But apparently, there was a right way to do this, and Hap knew _all_ about it. He licked and nibbled her until she couldn’t control her hips anymore at all and he had to hold them down. Prairie almost shrieked when Hap found her sweet spot and gave a small but pronounced suck, and then he was humming against her with a low “mmmm” both expressive of his feelings and designed to destroy her with a slight vibration which threw her overboard.

Prairie’s fingers moved sloppily through Hap’s hair as she moaned over and over. He rose up again and kissed her lips so sweetly, soothing away her agitated breathing. Tasting herself on his mouth, she felt another shockwave go over her. All these sensations were so new, anyone would imagine her to be a virgin.

Her next thought was to wonder if Hap himself assumed she hadn’t had sex before and a vague worry creased her forehead at the thought that hearing otherwise might hurt him. Of course it stood to reason that a woman her age wouldn’t be wholly inexperienced, but she knew how sensitive he was, how possessive of her…

“I had no idea this was going to happen,” Hap said regretfully, stroking her face. “I don’t have any protection…we can just keep to foreplay this time. As hard as that’s going to be for me, and I assure you, it’s quite the challenge.”

 _Holy Shit,_ how long had Hap himself been withholding from sex? He didn’t have so much as a pack of condoms anywhere in the house?

“It’s okay, I’m on the pill,” Prairie rushed to tell him, immediately touching his face and heart to try and glean his reaction. His forehead creased and he made a small sound of muffled frustration. “Hap…”

“It’s fine, Prairie, really. I. I always thought you must be dating. You had every right to.” But he was crestfallen. “Honestly, I think I forced myself, ridiculously, preposterously, to assume you were entirely innocent in this category just so that the thought of you with other lovers wouldn’t keep me up at night. Sleeping pills or not, I don’t think I could have rested for a moment.” He didn't move away from her because she had not disappointed or offended him; he wanted to get himself past his jealousy. Hap pulled her against his chest, snuggling her close, easing the awkward confusion of the moment.

“I was just lonely and curious. It hasn’t been a frequent thing. Only every now and then, and with both of them…I pretended it was you.” Prairie’s voice caressed the words, willing him with all of her heart to believe their truth. “Except that I could never make myself believe it because none of them could make me feel what you made me feel every single day, when you barely even touched me. Just the sound of your voice, the slightest pressure of your hand resting on my shoulder, Hap, it’s always been overpowering to me. I know you don’t need me to tell you this, but I can’t help wanting to be totally honest with you…I’ve absolutely never felt anything remotely like what you just did to me.”

“Your other lovers didn’t bother with foreplay?” He inquired, offended on her behalf, sounding about ready to find them and kick their asses.

“They tried to go down on me, but I never felt anything…it was just numb, waiting for something to happen that never did…disappointment…missing you…” Prairie unbuttoned Hap’s shirt, then felt his body with fascinated fingers. He gasped as her touch covered his firm body from his stomach to his chest and biceps. It was as if he hadn’t been cared for intimately in ages, which made her perversely sad, since she knew she’d have been every bit as jealous if he’d had other lovers. 

“Don’t tell me that was your first orgasm,” Hap wondered, sounding so concerned on her behalf that she laughed affectionately.

“Of course not, silly. I’ve been masturbating since I was a teenager. What planet do you think I come from, anyway? I’ve just never come when I was having sex before. The guys I dated, if you even wanna call it that, because it barely qualified…they had no idea what they were doing.” She waited rather more cheerfully as her words sank in, trying to guess how he would react to her reference to solitary exploration. 

“Sorry, you just _massively_ distracted me,” Hap admitted. “I can’t stop picturing you in your bed upstairs, touching yourself…” Prairie smiled at this, then reached down to cup her own breast, squeezing firmly before letting one hand drift to her groin. “Oh, no you don’t,” he insisted gruffly, placing her hands back down on the mattress, pinning her there. “You’re trying to drive me past every remaining semblance of my sanity.”

“Is it working?” She lifted her hips, brushing herself against his cock as it strained harder against his jeans. It was past time to ease his tension, so Prairie unzipped his jeans and reached up with her toes to push them down, easing them over his legs and past his ankles with a careful flick. “That’s better. Will you teach me more? Take me all the way.”

“Yes,” Hap hissed, kissing her mouth so greedily, rubbing his erection against her damp entrance. “Please tell me how it feels. I love hearing you tell me, Prairie.” Easing inside, he grunted in pleasure at her tightness. “Fuck, you feel amazing.”

“Then don’t stop,” Prairie implored. “You feel amazing too. So…ahhhh…” Hap stroked in and out several times before carefully thrusting as far as possible, causing electricity to course through her whole body. “So big. Oh, God…” She lifted her legs to cradle him tightly, wondering if he could get any deeper and rewarded to discover that it was just barely possible. Prairie put her hands on his ass and followed his rhythmic motion as their lips met repeatedly, getting wet and sloppy, relentless. When Hap sensed that she was close to orgasm, felt her starting to clamp down tighter around his cock, he pulled his face from her swollen lips and she knew he wanted to watch her expression when she came. Prairie wasn’t ready when she finished, expecting it to feel the same as the last time, but this was so much fiercer and sharper, seizing her with a vice grip until she let out a moan loud enough to make her very glad they were alone in the house.

Hap rocked into her just three more times before he found release almost as loudly. He caught himself, stopped himself from falling directly on top of her when he lost control, not wanting to crush her with his broad, powerful body. Instead, he landed on his side and pulled Prairie against him in a spooning position, one hand on her breast and the other on her stomach as they got their breath back.

“You stopped describing your feelings, but I think…you liked that,” Hap murmured, making Prairie laugh.

“What was your first clue?” She teased him, stroking his arm. “I think there are garage doors opening and closing by themselves all the way over in town.”  


“Town,” Hap repeated thoughtfully, like he was trying to shake himself sensible. “Shit. I’m supposed to be having lunch with Leon today so that I can get rid of him. What time is it?” They’d ripped off his watch and tossed it to the floor in the midst of their reckless passion, and Prairie flopped one arm down to graze the rug and sweep it up, passing it to him.

“Oh, good. I still have time to get there. I can’t believe I lost track of time — I think that might actually be a first for me, Prairie. Just like it’s the first time I’ve ever been in love. Does that sound stupid for someone my age to be saying?” Hap was torn between an urge towards truth that matched Prairie’s own and obvious self-consciousness.

“I’m so glad to be the first. I’m just sorry you were lonely all that time. Didn’t you ever…have girlfriends?” She didn’t want to know, actually. Or did she? There was no time to decide before he answered.

“Hmm. Girlfriends? No. I had school dance dates and double dates and as an adult, really just the occasional sexual encounter when I’d meet some woman at the bar who really put some work into flirting with me. That was, uh...before I met you...hasn't happened since. Anyway, I wasn’t even sure if I was just sleeping with them to shut them up.” At this, they both broke out laughing, and he added, “All I know is that it never felt like what people describe when they talk about being with someone romantically. I couldn’t…connect with any of them somehow.”

“ _We_ connect,” she acknowledged with a smile which she let herself realize was just a little sly and self-satisfied. 

He laced his fingers through hers and answered, “Yes. It was worth the wait for you.”

“I’m supposed to be meeting Rachel and some friends at a bar tonight,” Prairie told him. “Since you’re heading to town for lunch, why don’t I come with you, and then you can come with _me_ to the bar? I know you’re going to hesitate so can I just add,” she craned her head back so that he could see her face and pouted profoundly. “Pleeaaasse? I don’t want to spend the afternoon and night apart. I’d miss you.”

“Why do you have to do that?” Hap asked, kissing her as if he couldn’t possibly resist. “I don’t want to say no to you, Prairie, but I also don’t want you anywhere near Leon. He’s not a savory character, to say the least. Plus…I won’t fit in with the college crowd you’re going to be with in that bar.”

“Oh, you mean because no one else will have a date even remotely as handsome and fascinating as you?” Prairie asked, then reached up to touch his cheek, confirming that he was blushing as he tried and failed to sputter a reply. “It’s true, you know. And as far as Leon goes, why should you head into the lion’s den alone? Have we met? I’ll run point for you and we’ll get rid of him ten times faster than you could alone. Trust me, Hap.”

“Of course I trust you. Always,” he promised, but she heard the stress in his voice and decided that her new mission was to erase it altogether.

***********************************************************************************

 _He is kind of….reptilian_ , Prairie thought, forcing a smile to mask the automatic revulsion that shot through her at the very sound of Leon Citro’s voice. Why had Hap’s self-appointed mentor chosen to lock his rudely persistent interests onto his protege’s studies? Absent of the slightest invitation, Leon insisted on showing up out of the blue at least a few times a year. To hear Hap tell it, it seemed Leon would show up just at the very moment that Hap had finally started to relax again from his last visit.

“So, Dr. Citro, how long are you in town for?” Prairie stirred her strawberry milkshake, determined to get through this without having another mild anxiety attack, or worse.

As if his general creepiness wasn’t off-putting enough, she could feel that same fear boiling up inside her, the fear that came from the Other part of her, the part with the nosebleeds and possibly prophetic dreams. Yes, the sooner they could shrug this man off, the better. If only Hap wasn’t so worried that outright rejecting Leon’s friendship would have dire consequences, Prairie would’ve been happy to bid him a sassy goodbye and good riddance. Yet she had to admit that Hap was right to fear retribution — she felt in her bones that it would indeed follow swiftly.

“Oh, please, Prairie, call me Leon,” he urged. “Hap, you’ve simply got to tell me more about what you’ve learned from these hypnotic sessions, I mean Jesus fucking Christ, man!” He chuckled condescendingly. “You’ve spent how long on this now, four years? I’ve been through five entirely new sets of subjects in that same timespan. So has it been worth it, have the results been _that_ groundbreaking?”

Prairie gritted her teeth in aggravation, mainly on Hap’s behalf. Seeing how hard a time she was having in hiding her true feelings, Hap took her hand under the table, his firm, gentle thumb stroking her knuckles right down to her fingertips until she could have melted.

“We haven’t only been focusing on hypnosis, but yes, I believe we’ve uncovered encouraging revelations, evidence that certainly confirms my theory that there are in fact multiple dimensions existing in unison with our own. The more we can learn about the specific environments of those places, the closer we’ll get to breaking through to them. And even if that takes many years, I'll consider it time very well spent.” Hap was calm and friendly out of practice, his stiffened posture the only evidence of his discomfort, even as he soothed Prairie’s own. Hap was used to this song and dance, revealing just exactly enough to satisfy Leon that he was being kept in the loop as a respected colleague. But he never added details about the soundscapes or visual elements, much less the links Prairie had been making between the images from her N.D.E.’s and what had long been assumed as mere symbolism common to human dreaming.

“Well, you certainly have a comely assistant here, Hap. Makes her worth keeping around, despite being an undergrad amateur. You old dog, I can see those stars in your eyes. I hope he’s paying you enough, sweetie,” he said, acid dripping from his inexplicably hateful tone. She felt Hap’s fingers giving an angry tremble and squeezed them, whispering his name so that he would know not to stand up for her if it was going to cause problems. But there was no stopping Hap’s reaction now.

“I’m not paying this incredibly brilliant and dedicated researcher, my _partner_ , anywhere near enough for the outstanding work she does, but every time I try to give her a raise, she turns me down. You see, Prairie believes that the work we’re doing is a reward within itself, and she’d never want to lessen my budget just to put a few extra dollars in her own pocket. That’s the kind of integrity that a misogynistic slimeball like you could never begin to comprehend, Leon, and on that note, I think we’ll be going.” As Hap scowled around the resentful words, Prairie heard his other hand scraping cash from his pocket just before the crumpled bills hit the table.

“This time, do me a favor. Don’t keep in touch,” Hap snapped, and although Prairie wasn’t sure exactly which direction to point her satisfied, vindicated smile, she hoped Leon noticed it. 

As Hap and Prairie walked out of the restaurant, they could hear Leon calling after them with a dry cackle, “It’s always a pleasure, Hap…”

“You didn’t have to do that for me,” Prairie murmured, slipping her arm through Hap’s as they strolled down the sidewalk.

Hap chortled and kissed her forehead, adjusting her soft knit hat so that it sat perfectly above the ear which he took this chance to caress. “You loved it.”

“Okay, hell yes, I loved it!” She grinned and gave a little “victory” shake of her fists. “I don’t even know which part is the best — knowing that after all those years of putting up with that guy’s shit, you’re finally free of him? Or how…uh…” She licked her lips and the cool autumn air hit them, seeming to stick against her and slightly harden her peach—scented gloss. 

“What?” He asked, dying from curiosity.

“How fucking sexy it is that you stood up for me like that. You were _mad._ ” She laid her head on his upper arm as they strolled, that is until they turned the corner which she could tell was right by the move theatre and laudromat. The smells of cheap butter and detergent mixing always seemed to make her wonder if having them next door was such a great idea, although of course you could always catch a movie while waiting for your clothes to dry, she guessed. The usual vague thought started to drift across her in response to her typically strong reaction to smell, but before she processed it, her back was against the brick wall and Hap was kissing her hard.

“I’d never let anyone talk to you like that,” he told her once the need to breathe had forced their lips to part. 

People must be staring, Prairie thought, blushing but unconcerned by the concept. She heard mumbling about “P.D.A.,” “Get a room,” and “T.M.I,” but honestly it was all she could do not to rip Hap’s clothes back off right there in the street, so maybe these bystanders ought to adjust their puritanical outlook. 

Hap continued, “Out of all the times Leon’s ever pissed me off, nothing but his insult towards you would have made me react like that. I don’t know if it was a long-time-coming victory or a horribly short-sighted mistake, but I _do_ know he’s lucky I didn’t beat him to a pulp and then pour scalding coffee over his wounds.”

Prairie’s heart picked up speed. She knew Hap had a temper and that the attachment between them carried more weight than the average romance. They were addicted and obsessed, the feelings sweeping them away in an all-encompassing duet until the world faded away around them. It was no surprise that he’d come so close to completely snapping when her honor and value were even remotely questioned, though Prairie wondered if she should be concerned about the way Hap’s anger burned through his veins, tightening his muscles and making his jaw twitch sharply beneath her fingers when she ran them along his face to discern his emotions. But the truth was, nothing about Hap could ever scare Prairie. She loved his extremes, his tendency to fixate and brood, the way another person’s breech of the morals he clung to so steadfastly would make Hap struggle against his rage. Prairie would never, ever want him to change. Anyone would think, looking at them from the outside, that the bond between them had something to do with the way opposites attract. Yet from the start, she’d felt his heart beating in her own chest, known that his darker side belonged to her own, that they were made to protect and complete each other.

With Hap, it had always felt as though she’d gone swimming drunk and fallen in love with the undertow.

“You’re still mad,” she noted, feeling him nod. “Well, you can’t be mad all night, so come on, shake it off.”

“Mmm,” he conceded, tugging her coat collar playfully. “For you, I’ll cheer up. As long as you don’t _really_ make me go and try to mingle in a college bar with you.” 

Prairie gave a soft cooing noise and he groaned because she was pouting again, knowing how that look effected him, making it impossible to turn down even her most outrageous request. “I think you’re forgetting that the operative phrase there is ‘with you.’ You’ll be with me, Hap, and I’m guaranteeing you a _seriously_ good time. It’s our first date, after all, so would I really let you down?”

“First date,” Hap repeated, kissing her mouth again boldly, possessively. She could lose herself so easily. 

Was it always going to be like this? Was that possible? Prairie didn’t ever want this feeling to fade. They’d be lightening in a bottle, shining forever. He was all fluttery, this genius scientist with his ruggedly fit body and keen mind, with his storm of powerful emotions always kept just barely in check. Hap was melting too, just because she’d said the word “date.” Her skin tingled and new tears clung to her eyelashes because now she finally knew that he’d fantasized about dates with her all along, just as she had. They were so, _so_ happy.

“In that case, Prairie Johnson, go ahead and take me out on the town. I have no doubt that you’ll win me over as per usual.” He slipped his hands into the back pockets of her jeans and eased her forward with a shameless caress of her behind as Prairie giggled. 

“You’re trying to get me to just go home with you right now,” she accused.

“Yes, I am,” he murmured seductively, earning himself a swat on the arm before she clutched his jacket and pulled him in for another scorching kiss.

“I can’t believe those two are still going at it,” a customer muttered to a companion as they exited the laundromat.

“It’s tempting, but the bed will still be there when we get home later tonight,” Prairie reminded him. “So will the shower….and the kitchen table…and the bedroom floor…”

“Prairie,” Hap growled, immeasurably turned on by her suggestions. 

“We can spend the rest of our lives making up for lost time,” she promised him. “Now let’s go meet my friends. First round’s on me.”


	4. A little unruly

“I mean, I guess I just wish there were egg-and-potato Lean Pockets,” Rachel confided petulantly, taking a long sip of chardonnay. “Sure, the bacon flavor provides a quick and easy low-cal breakfast, but who needs all that sodium?”

“Don’t worry, it hasn’t gone to your waistline, Rach,” Scott assured her, “Uh, not that I noticed.”

“Excuse me?” Hap snapped his fingers condescendingly at the bartender, causing the twenty-something goth girl to glare at him. “Can I get a whiskey, neat, please? And cancel the beer.”

“Really?” Prairie laughed, playing with the braid that spilled over her shoulder and swinging back and forth lightly on the barstool. Hap wouldn’t even sit down, stuck in his refusal to allow that this outing could be fun. “It’s not that bad. Don’t be mean to the bartender.”

“She called me grandpa when I ordered our drinks earlier,” Hap groused, almost pouting. Prairie played with his jacket collar before using it to pull him closer. “I mean not even Dad? Come on.”

“I would have come up with a much better nickname,” she answered in a brightly flirty tone, now running her finger down his shirt front, feeling the aggravated puffs of breath in his chest starting to change, slow down and relax. He eased into her orbit and she added in a lower voice, “Like ‘Professor Sexy,’ or something.”

“Don’t be silly,” Hap said dismissively, but she knew he liked it. He was the worst liar in the world. “I mean of all people for us to even be around for what you term our first date, you’ve chosen _Rachel_ , who doesn’t remotely approve of our relationship, now do you, Rachel?” He raised his voice so that Prairie’s friend would hear, and Rachel gave him a confused look, eyebrows raised.

“Hap, cut it out,” Prairie urged, finally starting to get annoyed. He was sabotaging this to prevent himself from ruining it accidentally.

“I’m willing to take a wait-and-see stance on the matter,” Rachel replied. “I mean, assuming that you’re going to show my bestie here a much better time than you are right now.”

“Here,” Prairie continued when their food and drinks arrived, placing the appetizer sampler between herself and Hap. “Eat. Chill out, you’re not going to humiliate yourself or make me suddenly realize that I don’t want to date someone older than me.”

Hap placed several items on a small plate and gave it to Prairie, watching as she cut up her potato skin with precision. Her clever ability to accomplish almost any task despite her blindness never stopped impressing him. He took a bite of a quesadilla and chewed nervously. “I’m sorry.”

“Oh? Good. You should be.” Prairie sipped her cosmo, still sensing his discontented mood. “What? I’m not mad. I forgive you, okay, I understand.”

“That’s the whole problem, I don’t want you to have to do that.” His voice rumbled over the words with self-blaming angst. “You shouldn’t have to put up with me, accept my poor behavior, me letting you down like that…I can be a real jerk, Prairie.”

“Hmm. Jerk? No. Maybe a little insecure and anxious...” She gave him a grin full of so much affection that it half-melted his worries away. “But even if you were, you'd be _my_ jerk. And hey, I didn’t just let you off the hook. I showed you that you were out of line and you got back in it. It’s called a relationship, there’s give and take. We’ll learn to follow the ebb and flow of each other…I think we’re already pretty good at that as friends, but doing it as more is a new tact.”

“How do you know so much about relationships?” She could hear him swallow before he spoke, letting her know that he was still eating, which was very good. It assimilated him into the setting, taking away his sense of sticking out like a sore thumb. 

“Books? Girl talk? Fantasizing about being in one with you?” Prairie nodded to her left and added, “Listening to Scott trying to pretend not to have a crush on Rachel? Plus, try getting Renata talking about her husband sometime. I love her, don’t get me wrong, but he must appreciate the break when she comes here. A _bit_ of a taskmistress.”

“You’re so perceptive and wise, it kind of blows me away,” Hap admitted.

“Well, you have to get up _pretty_ early in the morning to come up with a problem I can’t think a way out of,” she bragged merrily.

“It just so happens that I already get up pretty early,” he reminded her, a playful note slipping back into his voice that piqued her curiosity in his next words. Leaning over to whisper in her ear, his warm lips brushing it enticingly, he said, “Starting tomorrow, I’m going to wake up with _you_ in my bed. Under those circumstances, I can get up even earlier.”

Prairie turned her face towards him and asked boldly, “Get up? Or get _it_ up?”

“Ay-o!” Scott chuckled from one seat over. “Looks like the fight is over and Hap’s decided this place ain’t so bad after all. I don’t know what tomfoolery y'all are talking about, but I’m pretty sure those barstools can only support _one_ person’s weight.”

Hap and Prairie suddenly realized that she _was_ almost in his lap. They laughed softly and she moved over, still resting her knee against his. 

“Wait, was that our first fight?” Prairie mused, turning back to face Hap. She touched his brow as it furrowed, then pressed a finger to his parted lips before he could apologize again. “No, that’s not what I— _Hap._ We had our first fight!”

“Why does this excite you?” He took a sip of his whiskey, and she could feel him regarding her with relief and intrigue. 

“Make-up sex,” she whispered theatrically in his ear, enjoying the hot flush in his cheek when she stroked it. 

“What’s up, guys?” Homer asked as he came walking in, soon draping his arms across Rachel and Prairie’s shoulders. Prairie’s fingers still lightly touched Hap’s face, and she couldn’t help liking the way his chin immediately pitched upward in stern disapproval. All it took was another guy _thinking_ about laying a finger on her to make him jealous. Perhaps she should have found this tendency annoying, but instead it was a major turn-on.

“Nothing, these two geeks finally got together. Oh, and I’m getting massacred. I put so much money on this game, man.” Scott was talking about the football which was playing across the screens above the bar, the same crushing loss of the favored local team that had many of the other bar patrons groaning.

Prairie heard Scott’s fingers drumming the counter nervously as Homer answered, “Aw, that’s what you get for betting on a sport you know nothing about. Why don’t you ask me for advice next time? Could stop you from going broke.” 

“Maybe I just will -- thanks, bro,” Scott said, and the agitated motion of his hand was relieved by a high five between the two men.

When Homer saw another friend across the bar and headed off to greet them, Hap took the opportunity to complain. “Why does he have to put his hands all over you like that?”

“Hap, may I remind you that Homer is our friend and collaborator, and you like him? He has a girlfriend and we’ve never had even the remotest suggestion of flirtation going on between us. You now know all of that, too.” Prairie knew this wasn’t leading to another fight, mainly because his intensity was just getting her fired up all over again.

“I do know that, but I also don’t care.” She shot him a mildly critical look and he took her fingers, pressing them to his hands as he raised them, palms up, in defeat. “Hey,” he said openly, “Feel that? I surrender to your better judgement.”

“Are you kind of sort of having a fun night?” Prairie clasped his fingers and grinned.

“I kind of sort of am. Thanks for including me. You’re…you’re just so special. I’d say I can’t believe my luck, but you know me. I don’t believe in luck.”

“Me neither. This has ‘destiny’ written all over it. Come on.” Her warm voice strengthened with purpose as she kept her hold on Hap’s hand, encouraging him forward, off the barstool and soon enough out the door. But first they said goodbye to their friends, Hap taking a moment to speak with Scott in a confidential murmur.

“Listen, on your way home tonight, don’t stop off in that alley. You’ve got to quit that before it goes too far.” Hap hovered over Scott’s shoulder as the younger man tried to avoid the inevitable confession which his words prompted.

“It’s only sometimes, man,” Scott sniffed unconvincingly. But Prairie was sure by the deepening tremor in his often hyper sounding voice lately that his drug use was far from a “sometimes” sort of thing. It stood to reason that his gambling was due to the dwindling funds brought on by his addiction.

“Let’s take it from sometimes to never. I have connections, I can get you in touch with counselors, a rehab clinic, whatever you need.” Hap’s voice had lost all its tendency for sternness in this conversation, expressing a sensitive and understanding concern which made Prairie feel a rush of pride in him. 

“Uh…yeah, maybe? I’ll think about it, alright? Thanks, Hap.” 

Hap clapped Scott on the back and then left with Prairie. He slung an arm around her shoulders as she shivered slightly at the colder night air. “Let’s get a cab; you’ll freeze walking back in this weather. Feels more like December than September.” Even thought it was a small town, on a Friday night there were always cabs to be had due to the influx of college drinkers filling the sidewalks.

It was such an almighty struggle, keeping their hands to themselves during the ride home. The driver was all wrapped up in the game on the radio, making it easy for Prairie to confide in Hap as she let her fingers dance across his knuckles, just barely able to make out the sound of him breathing. “I didn’t know it was going to feel like this. Falling in love.”

“What does it feel like?” Hap asked, fascinated. He ran a finger over the top of her hand, tracing her veins and bones, sending tingles through her body until she answered in a feathery tone.

“Skydiving,” she decided. That was it, that was the exact truth of her heart. There was no simple matter of “being in love” with Hap. She’d be falling forever now, _his_ forever.

He drew a long shaky breath, deeply affected. Finally, as the cab pulled up to the house, he answered her, somehow imbuing just one syllable with all the love swarming his stomach with butterflies, filling his heart with the same clouds she was falling through. 

“Yes,” Hap said.

***************************************************************************

Hap took the coat from Prairie’s shoulders, along with her hat and his own scarf, which he’d affectionately wound about her neck outside the bar. “Did you have enough to eat?” his voice was rich with a lustiness that made it hard to keep talking about such comparatively trifling concerns.

“I did,” she replied, but he was far from done with his pleasure-delaying, suspending their need until they both snapped under the delicious pressure. 

“Are you tired now?” There was so much going on in his voice: genuine solicitude and a sort of teasing that felt somehow bewitchingly _serious._

Still, she laughed the word “No,” listening attentively to his footfalls as he went to the record player, then lifted the needle before placing it on a specific groove. There was a deceptively affable, soothing tone to James Taylor’s voice as he sang, “ _Don’t let me be lonely tonight…_ ” Prairie could hear the hard tang of long-denied yearning under the surface, and as always she knew that Hap had selected this song intending to communicate with her, share his feelings. This track told her about how it had been for Hap over the last four years of knowing her, too afraid to cross the line and risk losing her friendship, her companionship. Her cheeks flushed yet again and tears glazed her eyes as she stepped into his arms, initiating the first few steps of a dance.

Prairie had a far-reaching and devoted relationship with Hap’s record collection. She used to try and find him in each note, determinedly sifting through every nuance of his eclectic taste that roamed from the Beatles to the Civil Wars; from 1940’s jazz to Lorde. There was only one real commonality; that restlessly urgent struggle between mind and heart binding Hap’s personality to each song as Prairie tried to find the spaces where he fit into the melodies and words. And Prairie was there too, rubbed into his vinyl, running in his circles. She didn’t have to practice analysis with him so much anymore; the subtext of Hap had become so wonderfully revealed and even growingly familiar. Swaying around the room with him now, it was unquestionably sure that blindness or no, she could see Hap. And he was beautiful.

“I’m sorry for the loneliness, for my part in waiting so long,” she said, interlocking her fingers at the nape of his neck as his head dipped towards hers. “Will you tell me one of your secrets? When did you think of me most, want me most?” Prairie asked this because she wanted to fulfill some dream of his, make it hers as well, let it consume her until they were one.

“Constantly,” he replied at once, then he hesitated slightly before honing in on one example. “I used to think about you in the shower. I’d smell your shampoo, your body wash, and then slip into a daydream, until I…” He did not need to complete the sentence. Prairie’s composure was close to shattering at the mere idea that he’d touched himself under such circumstances, brought himself to a clandestine agony of pleasure with her name on his tongue.

“Let’s make it come true,” she suggested, feeling the skip of his heartbeat against her. Thrilled at the way his body stiffened in overpowering arousal, she added eagerly, “Come on, I mean it!” 

*********************************************************************************************

Rivulets of hot water trickled down Hap’s back, slipping around Prairie’s fingertips where they pressed against his bare skin. “Careful,” he murmured, not wanting her to slide on the bathmat as they sank into each others’ arms.

“I’m fine,” she said with a shy smile, reaching up to ruffle his dampened hair. His laugh was roughened by desire, plus another sensation tugging at his heart.

“I don’t know how it’s possible I’ll ever feel this happy again,” Hap remarked, holding her almost carefully, his attentive grip landing on the small of her back. 

“I feel the exact same. But also like…how many different ways can we find to test the theory, over time? Maybe it’s endless, maybe _we’re_ endless, Hap.” 

She found his shampoo on the side of the tub and squirted a dollop into her hand before massaging it into his hair, eliciting a low, shocked sigh of satisfaction. This was sublime, taking care of him, soothing away the years of internalized angst, feeling him breaking blissfully apart beneath her slow, roving fingers. The water pushed the soap from his hair and she went about stroking his body with a cloth until he lost his control and took it from her hand, placing it aside. 

“Kiss me,” he begged, and she grabbed his face to bring it down to her hungry lips. He growled, yanking her soaked body against his hard, still-soapy upper torso, the scent of sandalwood and utter _Hap_ -ness in the misty heat making Prairie feel a desperate shade of joy. 

It was his turn then to create a bubbly lather of lavender in Prairie’s hair, making her sigh as he rested his face against it, breathing her in. He tipped her head back so that she closed her eyes as the water cascaded over her head, whisking the suds away. “What did you think about next?” she asked, smiling and blinking as stray streams of water playfully pelted her eyes and snuck between her lips.

He backed her against the tile wall, then took her loofah and squirted peach body wash on the fluffy mesh ball before holding it by the plastic handle, thinking carefully about his next move. She still loved those intent, calculating silences of his, and she was pondering this in a hazy mindset when he rested the loofah against her shoulder and started to move it over her body, the soap flowing generously over her breasts and abdomen as he used extra time and attention there, pressing firmly against her flesh. 

“Oh,” Prairie sighed sharply, realizing his intent right before he flipped the loofah upside down and ran the smooth, wet handle all the way from her wobbly ankle to her upper thighs, resting it there. “ _Oh,_ ” she added, unbothered by her less than eloquent verbalizations. The insistent demand in her core drove her crazy until she had to hold onto his shoulders to stay upright.

“Mmm,” Hap said so that she could hear his smile, the controlling one that only came out when he was in the mood to play. He liked seeing her worked up like this, wanted to be the one to take her as far as she could go in that direction. With this goal clearly in mind, he parted her thighs easily with one hand and rubbed the tip of the handle against her entrance, very gradually until her grip on him tightened.

The feeling of her nails sinking into his flesh made Hap drop the loofah and kiss her mouth again, drawing her lower lip out and then biting it. He went on like that, tasting her moist skin from her neck down to her stomach, where he swirled his clever, talented tongue until she found that despite her instinct to moan, when her lips parted to respond to the waves of anticipatory delight racking her body, no sound came out. Her mouth just hung open until she could summon the words he’d so painstakingly earned.

“Naughty boy,” Prairie accused, holding his head as he pressed a kiss upward against her pussy, his knees sinking to the floor. 

Hap pulled away just a tiny bit, enough to let her know he was looking at her face. His voice held a sinful game as he replied, “Good girl.” 

She lowered herself to the bathmat in front of him, her calves pressing to the slicked rubber surface as she claimed his mouth with passionate enthusiasm, this time earning a profound groan from Hap as their tongues tangled shamelessly. “Stand up,” she said lightly, waiting for him to acquiesce before taking his cock into her mouth, not hesitating to envelop as much of his length as possible. The suddenness of the motion made Hap grab onto the wall as his body jerked sharply forward. 

“Prairie,” he whispered as she went on licking and sucking, “ _Prairie._ ”

In taking on the role of mischief-maker, Prairie knew that she was ensuring he would avenge himself with the most wickedly perfect intensity, though she took enough satisfaction from watching him get off that this was only one part of her motivation. So she let go of his thick, throbbing arousal just long enough to ask in a pertly polite manner, “ _Yes_?”

That was it, the last thing Hap could withstand before he picked her up, waiting for her legs to encircle him before he pushed her against the wall and reached down to rub his cock against her slit. “Do you want this?”

“Yes,” she said in a full-bodied moan that increased his gratification as he thrust into her, a slow glide until they were hip to hip and she was panting, arms flung around his shoulders. He took her with continuously mounting speed, starting out by just letting her _feel_ his depth and girth within her until she once again understood everything she needed to know about getting what she wanted, what she’d asked for. Gradually, with a studied perfection, he pounded faster, then harder, too, especially insatiable when Prairie bit his shoulder. But she loved his mouth too much to neglect it, so she licked him there until he kissed her with at least as much greed as his pumping conveyed. When she came, she certainly would have hit the floor with a crash if it weren’t for Hap supporting her shaking body as her fingers weakened and fell back from him, a high-pitched squeal breaking from her lips. The noise as much as another deep thrust into her made Hap come, his palm smacking the wall as he still held her tightly against him with his other arm. His heavy breaths then were full of wonder that went on past the disbelief he felt the first time they were together, confirming them in the shared understanding that they were real, they could have this.

He pulled the curtain back shakily and grabbed towels, wrapping Prairie up and hugging her tenderly. “I love you,” he told her, kissing her forehead, rubbing her hair dry.

“I love you, too,” she almost sang in response, her legs feeling heavy with some kind of previously-unknown _good_ version of pins and needles. “And uh…I _am_ tired, now. So…” she laughed. “So fucking tired, Hap. Help!”

“Of course, my lady,” Hap agreed all too willingly. He brought her to his bedroom and closed the blinds, peeling the sheets down so that Prairie could nestle within them, immediately reaching her arms out for him.

They snuggled up, saying nothing further out of the fear that they might wake up from this dream of happiness if they got too bold right then.

Prairie thought at the time that it was an irrational fear, but later, she would reconsider the notion. Maybe some things were too precious not to be terribly fragile, by way of some cruel karmic twist which destiny, or the gods, or whatever force had brought them together only to wrench them apart deemed appropriately fair and balanced. 

She would have years to think about the weight of unconsidered consequence, of being so wrapped up in loving someone that wise paranoias faded into the background to snicker and creep close. 

The next morning, everything changed.


End file.
